


Broken Chess Pieces

by candlelight_smiles



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel & Vessel Interactions (Supernatural), Brotherly Love, Gabriel Being Gabriel (Supernatural), Good Sibling Dean Winchester, Lucifer in the Cage (Supernatural), Michael Loves Lucifer (Supernatural), Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, Mostly Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parental Bobby Singer, Protective Siblings, Tired Michael (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29091975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlelight_smiles/pseuds/candlelight_smiles
Summary: Michael offers to raise Sam from the dead to prevent Dean from making a demon deal. If the Righteous Man does not break in Hell, the First Seal cannot be broken. And he won't have to kill his brother. Michael then proceeds to sort of just... chill in the back of Dean's head. Dean hasn't figured out how to get rid of him yet, but he probably should, right?
Relationships: Bobby Singer & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Gabriel & Michael (Supernatural), Lucifer & Michael (Supernatural), Michael & Dean Winchester, Michael & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

Dean didn’t remember falling asleep. In fact, he hadn’t even thought himself capable of the act after what had happened to Sam. But he must have. Or he might have been hallucinating, from grief or sleep deprivation. Because there was an _angel_ standing next to him. 

Looking every bit like it had just stepped out of a children’s painting, right down to the large feathery white wings and softly glowing halo. Its features were too adrogynous and its pristine robes too loose to tell if it was male or female. The only thing it was missing was a harp. 

“Music never was my forte,” the angel supplied, answering his last thought as though it could hear it. Dean’s eyebrows inched toward his hairline. It turned its head toward him, green eyes warm and faraway. A fleeting smile played across its lips. “My little brother was far more adept at the subject. You should have heard the melodies he composed for our Father. Your mortal musicians could never compare.” 

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it. AC/DC rules,” Dean said. 

Its gaze finally focused on him, jerked free of whatever memory had been in its mind. It looked mildly amused more than anything else. The angel gave a noncommittal hum. 

“If you say so,” it murmured. White cloth fell up as it lifted its arm, exposing its wrist and the bottom half of its forearm. It extended its hand to him. “My name is Michael, by the way.” 

It had been a while since he attended church, _years,_ and that whole religion thing was Sammy’s schtick. But everybody knew Michael. Come on. 

“Like, the angel who booted Lucifer out of Heaven?” Dean said. 

“Archangel, technically, but yes. The very same,” Michael confirmed. 

“Huh.” He clasped the angel’s hand, giving it a firm shake. “Dean,” Dean supplied. 

“I know,” Michael said. “We have to talk.”

“About?” Dean asked. 

“It might be best if you sat down for this part, Dean,” Michael told him. 

He sat down on a chair that Dean was pretty sure hadn’t been there a second ago and gestured for him to do the same. Dean glanced behind himself to see an identical wooden chair. He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Nah, I’m good,” Dean said. 

“As you wish,” Michael replied. 

The chair remained nonetheless. 

“What do you want?” Dean asked. 

“I believe that we can help each other out,” Michael started. 

“And how would we do that exactly? You’re just a figment of my imagination,” Dean said. 

“Not quite. This may be a dream, but I’m very real,” Michael replied. 

“That’s exactly what someone who wasn’t real would say,” Dean said. 

The angel held up a hand for silence. 

“Just - listen. Please,” Michael interjected. 

Well, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere until he woke up. So Dean shrugged and muttered ‘fine’. 

“Thank you. As I was saying, we can be of help to each other. _You_ have a brother you’d like to keep safe, and _I_ have a brother that I’d like to keep safe. Yours is dead, and I will have to kill mine. But I believe that if we work together, we can change both of those things,” Michael explained. 

“How?” Dean asked. “Can you - can you fix him?” 

His eyes were drawn to the prone form of his brother, lying oh so still on the wooden slats in the middle of the room. 

“I can. Bringing his soul back to his body is within my capability. As is healing his wounds,” Michael replied. 

“What’s the catch?” Dean asked. 

There was _always_ a catch. 

“I do have to possess you in order to do so,” Michael said. “And as an angel, I do require your consent for possession. So you would need to say yes. Verbally.” 

“Okay, well, how is that going to help you exactly? You said you don’t want to kill your brother.” 

“That is correct. I do not.” The angel crossed his legs at the knee, absently adjusting the pale robes with nimble fingers. “If I raise your darling Sammy from the dead, you will not feel compelled to enter a deal with a demon. It’s a rather complicated matter, really, but essentially, if you never make the deal, you won’t go to Hell. And my brother won’t be released from his Cage, meaning I won’t have to kill him,” Michael concluded. 

Dean frowned. 

“If I go to Hell, your brother gets sprung from his cage? How is that-” he started to ask. 

“Just trust me, those two things are related. It is not your fault specifically that he gets released, but you going to Hell is one of many events that will ensure his release in the future,” Michael explained. 

“And him being released is bad…” Dean said. 

“Because I will have to kill him, yes. And also, he may possibly attempt to destroy humanity,” Michael mused. 

“What,” Dean said. 

“He has never really liked your species. Then, there’s all that pent up anger he no doubt has….” He shook his head, flawless blonde curls bouncing gently with the movement. “I imagine he would be quite ruthless,” Michael replied. 

“Why is killing him a bad idea again?” Dean asked. 

The angel fixed him with a chilling stare. 

“Because he is my _brother,_ ” Michael retorted. “I practically raised him. I took care of him in a way that most people could never understand. And I still _love_ him. I don’t want to kill him any more than you would want to kill Sam.” 

Dean held up his hands placatingly. 

“Fair enough,” he muttered. 

The harshness in Michael’s gaze bled out, and he looked… tired. Exhausted, really. 

“The choice is yours, Dean Winchester. Pray to me if you come to a decision,” Michael said. 

He turned into a literal beam of light, and white flashed across Dean’s field of vision. 

Dean woke up with a crick in his neck. He was lying on the floor near Sam’s body, head propped up awkwardly against the wall. 

It took Dean thirteen hours. Thirteen hours of being alone with his brother’s corpse. Thirteen hours of stewing in grief and loss and guilt. Thirteen hours of drinking beer like water. Thirteen hours before he finally cracked. 

Michael came when he called. 

Sam’s eyes opened. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and jolted up. He was… inside? Hadn’t he just been-

_under the stars, standing in mud, calling to Dean_

Sam rubbed his head with a frown. He felt very disoriented. He took a moment to glance around the unfamiliar room. 

“Dean?” Sam called out. 

To his relief, his brother did come racing into the room. 

“ _Sammy,_ ” Dean breathed. 

He stepped forward, sinking to his knees so quickly that they made an uncomfortable sounding crack against the wooden floor, and pulled Sam into a crushing embrace. His head rested on Sam’s shoulder. Sam endured the hug for as long as he could, but it was getting kind of hard to breathe. He wiggled his arms in their pinned position at his side and tapped Dean’s back. 

“Ow, Dean. _Dean,_ ” Sam wheezed. “Let go.” 

Dean held onto him for a few moments longer before he released him. He still kept his hands on his shoulders. 

“Sorry. I’m sorry, man. I’m just happy to see you up and around, that’s all,” Dean said. “Come on. Sit down.” 

He guided Sam over to the kitchen area and got him to sit. Dean sat down next to him at the table. 

“Dean, what happened to me?” Sam asked. 

“Well… what do you remember?” Dean asked. 

“I - I - well, I saw you and Bobby, and uh, then I felt this _pain._ This sharp pain-” He shook his head. “Like, white hot, you know? And then, you started running at me… and that’s about it,” Sam said. 

“Yeah, that - that kid stabbed you in the back. You lost a lot of blood. It was pretty touch and go for a while,” Dean explained. 

Something wasn’t adding up. 

“But Dean, you can’t patch up a wound that bad,” Sam said. 

And he didn’t feel any sort of discomfort at all, not even from the part of his back that was pressing against the chair. Surely there would have still been some pain. He hadn’t been unconscious _that_ long, had he?

“No, Bobby could,” Dean insisted. Well, that was a good point. If anyone _could_ fix up something that bad, it would be Bobby. Sam nodded. Something almost like relief flickered in Dean’s eyes, but it was gone in a blink. “Who was that kid anyway?”

“His name is Jake. Did you get him?” Sam asked. 

Dean shook his head. 

“No, he disappeared into the woods,” he said. 

“We gotta find him, Dean.” He rose up from his chair. “And I swear, _I’m gonna tear that son of a bitch apart-_ ” Sam started. 

“Whoa whoa whoa, easy, Van Damme,” Dean said. He gently pushed him back into the chair. “You just woke up. Let’s get you something to eat. You want something to eat?” Sam nodded, albeit a bit reluctantly. His brother gave him a wide grin. “Me too. I’m _starving._ ” 

Sam could have sworn he heard Dean hiss ‘shush’ under his breath as he turned his head away. 

“Did you say something?” he asked. 

“Nope,” Dean replied, popping the p with a chipper smile. “Now let’s get you some food. How’s pizza sound?”


	2. Chapter 2

Dean had been half sure that his initial meeting with Michael had been some sort of feverish concoction his brain had whipped up. He hadn’t actually expected Michael to show up when he prayed to him. 

Well, ‘pray’ was a bit too loose of a term. A more accurate description of what he had done was go outside and scream at the sky for Michael to show his face, in a way that was most likely considered blasphemous, what with all the profanity he didn’t bother omitting. 

Thankfully, Michael had not appeared too perturbed by the wording of his prayer. 

His resurrection mojo seemed to take less than a minute, and almost immediately afterwards, Dean was shoved back into the driver’s seat. Michael… well, he was still there, hanging out in Dean’s head, but he wasn’t talking. Or being very present. The most he felt was a weirdly consistent buzz under his skin, sort of like he had downed a pot or three of coffee. 

He had only piped up once when Dean had mentioned food to say something along the lines of ‘Sustenance is not something that you require while I am with you’. Which Dean had elected to ignore. 

Dean was also willing to ignore the fact that the angel hadn’t left for the moment. He wasn’t doing _anything_ as far as Dean could tell, besides maybe watching in the background. Maybe Michael just needed to recharge his batteries or something before he popped back up to Heaven or wherever it is that angels went in their spare time. Maybe bringing someone back from the dead took a lot of juice. 

Who freakin’ knew?

In hindsight, Michael had been incredibly vague about _why_ exactly he needed to possess Dean or why he needed a meatsuit at all. He hadn’t even really specified how long he needed to possess him. Then, there was that whole thing with that vaguely ominous basket case of a brother Michael didn’t want to kill and why where Dean’s soul went factored into any of that. 

To be fair, Dean hadn’t really tried that hard to find out before he went and got himself possessed. Honestly, Michael could have been the world’s worst negotiator, and Dean probably still would have said yes. He was in _that_ place. He probably would have sold his soul for just one more day with Sam. 

Dean found it hard to tear his attention away from Sam long enough to worry about any of the possible repercussions of this little deal of theirs. He just could not bring himself to care right now. Michael could be secretly plotting to blow up the world using his body or something, but-

 _Sam was alive._

Dean could always figure out the rest later. 

“-and that’s when you guys showed up,” Sam concluded. 

“That’s awful,” Dean said. He took another bite of his pizza. Sam nodded, staring numbly at his box of Chinese takeout. “Poor Andy.” 

“The demon said he only wanted one of us to walk out alive,” Sam added. 

“He told you that?” Dean asked. 

“Yeah.” Sam scoffed. “Appeared in a dream,” he said. 

“He tell you anything else?” Dean asked.

His brother shook his head. 

“No. No, that was it. Nothing else.” He frowned. “You know, what I don’t get, Dean, is if the demon only wanted one of us, then how did Jake and I both get away?” Sam said. 

“Well, I mean, they left you for dead. Sure they thought it was over.” Dean paced behind Sam’s chair, circling back around the table. “So now that Yellow Eyes has Jake, what’s he gonna do with him?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But whatever it is, we gotta stop it.”

“Alright, hold on. Okay? You need to get your rest. We got time,” Dean said. 

“No, we _don’t,_ ” Sam retorted. “Dean-” 

Dean cut him off. 

“ _Sam._ Oceans aren’t boiling. Frogs aren’t raining from the sky. Let’s get you your strength back first,” he said. 

Logically, Dean knew that Sam was physically fine, but he had just _died_ for fuck’s sake. He didn’t need to throw himself back into the fray right this second. Sam’s lips thinned as he pressed them together, eyes dropping for a few moments before he spoke. 

“Well, did you call the Roadhouse? Do they know anything?” he asked. 

“Yeah…” Dean said. He dragged a hand over his face, biting back a sigh.

“Dean, what happened?” Sam asked. 

“The Roadhouse… it burned to the ground. Ash is dead. Probably Ellen. A lot of other hunters, too,” Dean said. 

His brother’s eyes grew wet for a moment. Sam blinked several times in quick succession. He huffed out a breath between his teeth. 

“Demons?” Sam asked. 

“Yeah, we think so. We think ’cause Ash found somethin’,” Dean said. 

“What did he find?” Sam asked. 

“Bobby’s working on that right now,” Dean said. 

“Well, come on, then. Bobby’s only a few hours away.” Sam slid off his chair and started to step toward the door. Dean stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. 

“Whoa, Sam. _Stop,_ damn it. Come on, man. You almost died in there. I mean, what would I have…” Dean trailed off, chest tightening and throat closing up with horror at the mere memory of Sam’s cold body in his arms. He swallowed tightly. “Can’t you just take care of yourself for a bit? Just a _little_ bit?” 

“I’m sorry. No,” Sam said. 

Dean felt exasperation and fondness in equal measure at the determined look in his eyes. Sammy had always been a stubborn kid.

When Bobby opened his door to see both Sam and Dean, he knew that Dean must have done something unbearably foolish. Sam didn’t seem to know anything about it if the way he thanked him for patching him up was any indication. So Bobby waited until he could corner Dean alone outside to grill him for answers. 

“You stupid ass! What did you do?” Bobby demanded. Dean couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. He grabbed the younger man by the shoulders and shook him. “ _What did you do?_ ” Dean still wouldn’t look at him. “You made a deal. For Sam, didn’t you?” That got him to look up. Briefly. The tendons in Dean’s neck bobbed as he swallowed. “How long did they give you?” 

“Bobby… I-” Dean paused and looked away. 

“ _How long?_ ” Bobby yelled. 

“I don’t know!” Dean retorted. 

Bobby felt a lead weight settle in his stomach. What had he gone and done now? 

“ _Damn it,_ boy. What the hell does that mean?” Bobby asked. 

“Well, I, uh, made a deal with an angel, so it’s different, I guess,” Dean muttered. 

“You what?” Bobby said. 

“I made a deal with an angel,” Dean repeated. He scratched the back of his neck. “His name is Michael. Said he’d fix Sam up if I let him wear me for a bit. So he wouldn’t have to kill his brother or something. But hey, not going to Hell. That’s a plus.” 

Bobby narrowed his eyes. 

“He still riding your skin?” he asked. 

“Uh, yeah. But I’m still me, Bobby,” Dean insisted. 

“Uh huh.” He pulled out a flask of holy water from his coat. “Drink this,” Bobby said. 

Dean sighed and took a long swig of it. 

“See?” He cracked a small smile. “Not a demon.” 

“Can’t be too careful,” Bobby said. “Give me your arm.” 

Dean rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm, letting Bobby test him with silver. There was no reaction. Well, besides the fact that the wound healed almost instantly by itself. Bobby hmphed and wiped off his knife. 

“Now tell your pal he and I need to talk,” he said. 

“He doesn’t really talk to me much. I’m not sure he’s gonna respond,” Dean told him. 

Bobby grabbed the dark lapels of Dean’s coat and stared him dead in the eye. 

“We need to have a chat.” 

His gruff tone left no room for argument. 

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Dean just continued to look at him, green eyes wide. Then, a bluish white light lit up in his pupils, spreading to envelop his irises. Dean’s posture changed, growing more rigid. It was as though any and all expression had been wiped from his face, leaving a blank slate behind. The light faded. 

“Hello, Robert Singer.” 

The voice that left Dean’s lips was smooth and calm, like the surface of a tepid pool. 

“You Michael?” Bobby prompted. 

Dean’s head lowered in a single nod. 

“You’re worried about him,” Michael observed. “Dean.” 

“He’s my boy. And if you hurt him, angel or not, it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” Bobby told him. 

“No harm can come to him while he is my vessel,” Michael replied. “But I understand.” 

Bobby released the front of Dean’s coat. He planned to keep a close eye on them. 

“Glad we understand each other,” Bobby said. “Now te-” 

A clatter in the junkyard a few feet away drew his attention. Michael, for his part, did not seem particularly interested in finding out the source of the noise, but he still padded after Bobby. Ellen came out from behind an old car, and Bobby exhaled in surprise, relief. 

“Oh God,” he breathed. “Ellen.” 

“ _Ellen!_ ” 

Either the angel was a heck of a good actor, or that was Dean who rushed forward and hugged her. Michael didn’t strike him as the hugging type, so he hoped it was the latter. Ellen hugged him back, and Dean rested his head on her shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut.


End file.
